On April 7

On this day in ...... 1930, Vilma Espín (left) was in born Santiago de Cuba, the daughter of well-to-do parents with ties to the Bacardi Rum Company. Among the 1st women in Cuba to earn a chemical engineering degree, Espín did a year of postgraduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before returning home and becoming active in the antigovernment guerrilla movement in Cuba. (photo credit) In a rebel camp in the Sierra Maestra she met Raúl Castro, whom she soon married. Founder of the Cuban Federation of Women in 1960, she took part in politics thereafter as a member of Cuba's Council of State. Espín died in Havana in 2007.